Journal Article

Proud to Be Pride: A Content Analysis of City Websites

Gillberg, Nanna, Adolfsson, Petra

2015

Overview

In today’s society, cities on a global scale are competing for resources and publicity. According to Richard Florida’s creative capital theory, highly educated, creative people are the driving force behind regional economic growth. Creativity has become a main keyword in urban marketing around the world. What the “creative class” is looking for in a place is openness to diversity of all kinds. Hence cities are trying to attract the creative class by communicating this trait. How is diversity in general and gay friendliness more specifically communicated through websites promoting cities? That is the overriding question posed in this article. The article examines the official websites of three of the five largest cities of each continent. Inspired by the work of Florida, the studied websites are seen as examples of how gayness works as a form of cultural capital. The results indicate a variation in how gay friendliness is presented globally, indicating the need for awareness on the part of city marketing officials as to how material is produced and what interests are represented in the final content. The results also suggest that the communication of gayness can be understood as the production of cities as sites of creativity, cosmopolitanism, and coolness.

• Publisher: Common Ground Research Networks
• Subject: Business Administration / Cities / Cosmopolitanism / Creativity / Cultural capital / Diversity / Economic growth / Företagsekonomi / Gender Studies / Genusstudier / Homosexuality / Information Systems, Social aspects / Marketing / Multiculturalism & pluralism / Publicity / Sociologi / Sociology / Systemvetenskap, informationssystem och informatik med samhällsvetenskaplig inriktning / Websites